About

Vision

Collectively, we can make cities more vibrant, inclusive and sustainable places to live, work and enjoy.

Mission

Doh Eain preserves heritage, improves public spaces and organises activities that connect people with places, employing a user-centered, participatory approach. In doing this we aim to inspire and enable people to participate in re-shaping their city while retaining cultural heritage.

Our Beginnings

Doh Eain began informally towards the end of 2015 when Emilie helped our now team member Gulam and his family renovate their apartment in a historical building on Bogalay Zay street. Due to the illness of their mother, this family had run into financial trouble. Receiving financial and design support from us, their apartment was upgraded to modern standards and rented out to a new tenant. Renovation was paid back over time, while the family started enjoying a solid monthly income. Soon after, other family members and friends who owned heritage spaces started approaching us with similar requests for restoration help.

Parallel to this work in 2016 we also started converting one of Yangon’s many trash alleys into a small vegetable garden, thinking that these spaces should be used to create much needed public spaces where there were previously none. Early 2017 the garden went viral on social and local media and the local government threw its weight behind several more “trash alley to Alley Garden” projects. This is when the two strands of our work, restoring heritage and upgrading public spaces, come together.

We realised that these services were not only of value to Yangon and maintaining its historical and cultural identity, but also that they supported neighbourhood’s socio-economic growth, and contributed to social cohesion, wellbeing and sustainability. We saw a role for a social enterprise to preserve and improve heritage and urban landscapes directly with the people and communities that inhabit them. There was a gap in the market for the action-oriented work that is key in maintaining the city's unique characteristics and creating an urban environment that enables people and society to thrive.

Thus, we formally established Doh Eain and set out on this mission.